Andrew Samwick points to a paper by Jayanta Sen that suggests that it is in the interest of oil consuming nations to tax oil. Sen writes,

a tax on crude would transfer wealth of $100+ billion a year from foreign governments to the US consumers, thus providing a major economic stimulus to the economy while at the same time reducing consumption of gas…For a range of demand and supply elasticities that I study, the wealth transfer savings for the United States (which has about one-third of global oil imports) should be in the range of $108 to $152 billion a year.

At the Saffran Conference, Jeff Frankel rattled off seven advantages of a tax on oil–I don’t remember all of them, but they are bound to include reducing pollution, reducing trade imbalances, encouraging search for alternative energy, and more.

But that is an example of a policy advocated by economists that is a political non-starter.